Breaking Bad: Open House - Making It Rain

- Last Week I mentioned how watching Breaking Bad week to week can be quite a different experience to the DVD marathon. Quite a few of my friends and apparently most of the world caught up on the show in the intervening year between seasons three and four, and I imagined there would be some growing pains adjusting to the pace and there'll be a subset of fans whom for the show needs to be intensely building to something at all times, those who care more about its plotting than its characters. Any episode that doesn't feature the gangster element heavily is going to be seen as frustrating, let alone one that has no Gus and no Mike but features Marie and Skylar prominently.

- Which is a shame, because the genius of the show is the level of intricacy it puts into its characters, as opposed to it's acumen as a thriller. And if anything the part which is thrilling only works on such an ascendant level because of the investment we have in all of the characters. So the ' I don't care about Marie' sentiments seen across comments sections everywhere following this episode grate me some. I know everyone already hates Skylar even though she's a fascinating character embodied by an incredible performance, but by my count Marie has never got close to this amount screen-time in any episode before this in spite of being a regular character, so if anything it's a faux-pas on the part of the show to just get to exploring her now. I don't get at what point complaining about spending time with great characters simply because they're women and not men becomes sexist, but I'm pretty sure it's getting close.

- Having said that, I do think this is the weakest episode of the season, despite liking almost everything in it. It lacked a throughline perhaps, and everything felt a little disconnected. Maybe because this was the first time Walt didn't lead any kind of narrative, and was the most sparingly used we've ever seen him be. They story-line he was involved in was lead by Skylar and because Breaking Bad is so fundamentally his story, and supporting characters even in their infinite complexity often act as a barometer of Walt's decision making, whose lives act as collateral damage to Walt's ambitions. All of them are worse off for the decision Walt made in the pilot, even if many of them are unaware of who he's become.

- The Marie story saw her visit open houses and each time making up an elaborate story for herself, always revolving around being at an exciting new turn in her life. Be it her 'husband' quitting his job at Nasa to spend more time with the family, or her getting into a clay modelling business and looking for a viable studio, it all revolved around Marie being pro-active, taking control of her life and turning a corner. Making a choice to be happy. Options which her marriage to Hank, which is now hitting a place of stalled existential despair, don't allow her. There she is a prisoner of her situation, nurse-maid and metaphorical punching bag of a man she loves and admires. A situation that has no end in sight.

-So her various fantasies of being somewhere new and exciting in her life, all terrifically played by Betsy Brandt, struck a very poignant note. It also saw the return of the kleptomaniac story from season 1, and while back then it felt arduous and unnecessary, here it made perfect sense. A desperate act of lashing out impotently. A it does no good but at least it does something kind of deal. Marie was essentially an erratic and self-absorbed person in the early going, but Hank's breakdown forced her into being altruistic and self-sacrificing, a person she's not necessarily built to be. Good stuff, and a long time coming.

- Dean Norris may be doing his best work as paraplegic Hank, and that's no mean feat given how excellent he was last year. He's just so angry, so bitter. And that scene where he discovered Marie had been arrested for spoon-stealing was incredible. I think he'll get better as it goes along though, particularly since his cop buddy gave him Gale Boetticher's Super-lab notebook. So it begins.

- In a way the episode's B story was lead by Skylar, who finally apprehends the car wash from the stubborn Bogdan, an does so in fantastically underhanded fashion. A think a lot of people's problems with Skylar stems from that she's a flawed yet forceful personality, and male viewers don't want a woman challenging their anti-hero. He's supposed to be rediscovering his masculinity and being awesome, not getting his balls busted by some bitch. Why is she telling Walt what to do? Why doesn't she just shut up and be clueless like Rita from Dexter. Now that was a great female character. SHE knew her place. OK, Rita bashing is always a cheap shot, but I genuinely believe this can be the only way these guys see it. Because the show's approach to Skylar has been one of the best things about it as its grown. Time was when she was just another clueless spouse, but she found out, discovered her darkness and now matches Walt almost in her scheming.

- Note the awesome scene where she tricks Bogdan into thinking his property is worthless via Saul Goodman stooge. Awesome.

- I love how Skylar is already starting to take control of the running of Walter White's Criminal Empire Inc, being the one who makes the decisions and decides which ways to go. Because Walt, for all his badassery and Heisenbergisms, is still the recessive one in this relationship, because that's how it always was. In a way Walt only found his balls once he pursued his extra-curricular activities and when he was separate from Skylar. Because when they get together she has a power over him that even he can't help. See for instance the scene where Skylar gets him on board with her car wash scheme, by expertly manipulating his ego, insinuating Bogdan doubted his manhood. It seems this is one dynamic that can never change.

- I think the seeds of the great White marriage reconciliation began here too, and one only had to look at the final scene between the two, as they shared champagne celebrating their new property. The slightly flirtatious vibe, the way that for first time possibly in the entire show, Skylar seemed genuinely impressed by Walt, his power and his status. This was an inevitablity, how is Skylar in the show if they split for good, but I like how they're not rushing it.

- Where the fuck is Walter Jr? His total season 4 screen-time currently runs at 1 line and 25 seconds.

- Aaron Paul's Jesse continues to be a hurricane through this season, such a presence of raw emotional pain that it hurts so much to see him on screen. This episode was Jesse-lite, but Jesse's go-karting/returning home to find his house a crack den montage was the episode's highlight for me. Jesse's primal go-karting scream hurts to the bone. And something tells me this is definitively going to be the year of Aaron Paul.

- Also the line that saw Jesse comfort Walt about getting beat up was I think meant to be funny, but ended up incredibly moving. At least to me. Jesse bin beaten up a lot, yo.

- As I said, no Mike, No Gus, No Walter Jr. I like Gus being here in everything but sight what with the security camera in the lab and his new henchman following Walt everywhere, but I think I'd like him to be in next week's episode.

- Overall, a nice little character episode that did a lot for the show's minor characters, and in particular for Marie, and giving her a little extra dimension was well overdue. Perhaps the episode lacked a little focus, but I liked so much of what it was doing I didn't mind. I think the plot best get started next week though or people be losing their shit.

Rating: 7/10

Breaking Bad: Thirty-Eight Snub - Left 4 Dead

Zombies are dead. It don't matter what they're job was when they were alive.

- I often think that you can identify the greatest television by how fascinating watching nothing happen is. If a show can develop its world and its characters enough that watching them be is as fascinating as watching them do, then I'd say you're onto something special. Now I have no doubt there will be Breaking Bad fans who wish every episode could be 'One Minute', who wish every episode could be 'Full Measure'. Those who wish the show would be about Heisenberg as opposed to Walter White. I'd imagine they won't like this episode very much. And don't get me wrong, those are my two favorite episodes, but they work as well as they do because of the sheer delicacy and intelligence the show puts into the build, because of the incredible level of understanding it has of it's characters.

- I don't mean to diminish viewers who like the show best as a thriller, but I am saying that if that is the only version of the show you have time for then the week to week Breaking Bad experience may be a little frustrating. For example plot-wise, there's pretty much scraps here. Walt decides to take out Gus but hits a dead end, Skylar tries to purchase the car wash but hits a dead end and Walt tries to sway Mike to his side. Thirty-Eight Snub was in many ways the calm after the storm episode, dealing with everyone reacting as oppose to acting, but it's still one that did a tremendous amount of character work and it's the kind of slower, quieter episode this show can do so well.

- I think the strongest aspect of the episode was the Jesse plot-line, which essentially saw him throw an epic day-spanning rager in his house, anything to avoid quiet, to avoid having to deal with what he's done. This both allows the show to get extremely creative visually, which it does at all quarters here with at least three visual set-pieces looking and feeling exemplary, but also Aaron Paul to do so much yet again whilst saying very little. I don't quite know how it happened, but Paul has gone from exaggerated comic relief to giving one of the best performances on television, and Jesse has gone from tertiary annoyance to profoundly tragic protagonist, the worst inflicted victim of Walt's path of destruction and I'd argue the truest centre of the show.

- Jesse's someone who's grown into a man before our eyes, yet this development has been surrounded by despair, by loss and by corruption. He's been disowned by his family, had his girlfriend die in bed next to him, been forced to fight back his almost innate decency all the way up to killing a man, all the while being deeply alone. Walt has his family. Jesse has no-one., because Walt's taken it all away from him. And the tragedy is Jesse is trying to become a bad guy at every turn, he desperately wants to feel nothing and be the monster his world requires him to be, he is just incapable. Which is why I loved his stuff in this episode. The party, which was just basically Jesse doing anything and everything not to deal with killing Gale (and seeing Victor's throat slit in front of him can't have helped) but at the end, everyone has to go home, even Badger and Skinny Pete, leaving Jesse with the person he least wants to be with, himself.

- How haunting was that final shot with Jesse in front of the super-woofer. Seeing him crack-up for the first time believe since all the shit went down, it was just agonizing. Give all the Emmy's to Aaron Paul for that scene alone. Honestly, when is this kid going to catch a break.

- Ok so the Rhoomba-cam shot was pretty inspired, as we got a POV of the little cleaning machine as it cruised through the aftermath of Jesse rave 2011. Not to mention the terrific way the raging scenes were shot, and of course that last pull away from Jesse. Some pretty pimp camera work and editing on display here.

- I do enjoy that Skinny Pete and Badger have become the number one source of hope and light on this entire show. The darkness is so thorough at this point that the mere sight of Jesse's ridiculous friends makes me do an internal jump for joy and have an involuntary big grin on my face. For Skinny Pete and Badger. Love these guys. True to form, their drug-fuelled debate about what in fact the best zombie game is ( Resident Evil 4, Left 4 Dead and call of duty: WOW zombie mode all in the mix) was a neat little comic gem. And Matt Jones and Charles Baker's giddy performances add great colour to the series.

- Also the show saw fit to bring back Jesse's sort of girlfriend Andrea for what I assume is a final bow. I do think she is a character that has been used a little too pragmatically, there simply to be related to the boy who shot Combo and to cause Jesse's anger at the end of season three, to be a catalyst rather than a human being. This is perhaps why she's being ushered off the show, as Jesse gives her money to start a new life with her son. Like I say, it's a pawn of a character, but Emily Rios was solid enough and I'm glad the character was given closure as opposed to simply forgetting about her. Aaron Paul was again awesome in that scene.

- As far as the Walt side of things go, this episode yet again reinforced the notion that Walt is much more adept at improvising than he is at meticulously planning, and his schemes to both kill Gus (by basically shooting him with an illegally bought handgun) and to get Mike to waver toward his side both ended in firm dead-ends. With Mike giving him a beating on the mere suggestion, and Gus actively distancing himself from Walt. Or as Mike says 'You'll never see him again Walter'.

- I love the way that Mike's relationship with Walt has developed this season, going from the sense that despite being a professional, Mike has a soft spot for Walt, even being constantly impressed by his scheming. But post-Gale, Mike is looking at a different man, a much more calculated, ruthless one than he thought he was dealing with. And that is showing in Jonathan Banks' performance, which is so much more distant, more cut-off. Great work.

- Perhaps the aimlessness of Walt's quest was a little too telegraphed, but it felt like a necessary acknowledgement the show had to make, so I'm fine with it.

- Who else let out a cheer when Mike punched Walt in the face? Walt has certainly become the least likable character on the show, by design of course as the slogan goes they're turning Mr Chips into Scarface, so full of Ego, of entitlement and of arrogance. Yet Cranston's so great that I' watching him with no less investment or interest.

- A terrific teaser, seeing Walt purchase his gun of an aged, good ole' boy type arms dealer. Deadwood's Jim Beaver only had one scene in the episode but he made for a terrific double act with Cranston, and made the teaser feel like a story unto itself. No show opens every week stronger than Breaking Bad, it has mastered the cold-open to the point where it's not even funny.

- The Hank and Marie arc continues to simmer, as Hank takes out all his frustrations and anger on his wife, treating her with a focused disdain. Hank is a proud man, and one who perhaps defines himself in more traditional masculine terms, so seeing him deal with being disabled is its own little horror, but it's bringing the best out of Betsy Brandt, who's stiff upper lip in dealing with his cruelty is quite heartbreaking. I'd say that Brandt has been underused in the past, but this season seems to be rectifying that, as she both has more screen-time and seemingly her own arc, for the first time in the season's run. Dean Norris, needless to say, is absolutely nailing the sheer resentment Hank has for his situation. This guy is probably never going to get recognition for this performance, there are too many other showier roles on Breaking Bad, but it truly is incredible and up there with anyone else on the show.

- If I did have a complaint thus far, it's that Walter Jr. Has pretty much been an extra so far. I think he's had at best three lines in two episodes. No Gus or Saul here either.

- Is it just me or was the Car Wash guy a really good actor, Anna Gunn was great but that was an unexpectedly good piece of acting by a guy hired for his eyebrows.

- But all a terrific, contemplative episode at least up to the standard of last week's premiere if not a little better. Keep it coming.

Rating: 8/10

Breaking Bad: Box-Cutter - Mess With The Best, Die like The Rest

Man in a Barrel.

The Breaking Bad story is perhaps the most romantic in television history. Obviously when I say this I'm not referring to the show's content, which is about as far from warm and fuzzy as it's possible to be without circling back round again. A brutal, uncompromising tragedy about how the choice one man makes erodes his soul and the souls of the people he most cares about. It's about watching a good man slowly and methodically become a monster, from hero to villain in a way series television hasn't quite seen before. No, when I say romantic, I mean the story of how it went from a low rated, mixed reviewed show on the brink of cancellation to creative juggernaut, sure to be in any conversation regarding the pinnacle of what the medium can do.

How it went from a rejected FX pilot, passed over for what my calculations tell me can only be Dirt - the paparazzi show starring Courteney Cox. To a low-rated, abbreviated and frankly mixed reviewed first year that stared cancellation in the face until an unexpected and incredibly unlikely Emmy win for Bryan Cranston (Also known as the most important Emmy win ever) bought it enough clout to be given a second year, where it really had to do or die. It did, ironing out problems and just getting insanely better every week. The critics responded and the viewers responded, and the rest as they say, is history. Breaking Bad earned every bit of praise it gets and every viewer it gets, because it has an unyielding desire to improve, a mandate to take risks and to never sit comfortably. It's the rarest of example of a show becoming incredible out of a sheer Darwinian need to survive, and to go from there to being the best show on television, well like I say, it's the most romantic story in television.

- But anyways, to business. Box-Cutter was perhaps in a better position to carry on momentum than last year's No Mas, because the soul-crushing cliffhanger at the end of season three informed most of what would and could happen in this episode. So in advance we knew the whole episode was ostensibly going to be about Gus' reaction to Jesse and Walt killing Gale, and on top of that we knew Gus wasn't going to kill either of them, both because he needs a chemist and because these two just won Emmy's and are the stars of the show. Is it suddenly going to be about Skinny Pete?

- No. So what they had to do was draw pathos and tension out of a story everyone knew the resolution of, even the characters to certain respect. And to that the episode had to make it seem neither obvious or rote. Plus there's the specter of the masterful third year finale hovering over, daring it to flub the landing to one of the best episodes in television history. Looked at in this way, Box-Cutter had quite an unenviable job, it had to be about giving us answers we already knew, yet the expectation level for it be amazing was going to be stratospheric. But it's this show we're talking about, so naturally it met both obligations nicely.

-Can I just take a minute to say how glad I am that Jesse killed Gale? Not in a sadist sense, well maybe a bit, but more in that moment was so dramatically perfect that copping out of it would have been some 'Lila Kills Doakes' type shit. I guess it was silly of me to assume these writers would do anything that lame.

- What I particularly liked was how much the episode was about waiting. Too many season openers deal with cliffhanger's as if they were something to be ticked off, a necessary evil to dispense with in the first 5 minutes before they can get to the story they want to tell for the year, but rather than make the ' Gus reacts to being beaten' scene a stumbling block, or even a cheap in your face moment, they make it the set-piece of the episode, one they make you wait for and anticipate, with Jesse and Walt sitting silently in the super-lab, waiting their fate. Some great reaction acting here from everyone involved, saying everything whilst saying nothing.

- If anything, Gus' lieutenant Victor was the protagonist of the episode's first half-hour, in both his anger reacting to Gale's death and his eagerness to show that he can cook the Meth recipe so Gus can kill Walt and Jesse. On paper, a minor character being a glorified extra for over a year and than suddenly getting lines and emotions is a telegraph that they're not long for this world. And sure enough that's how it played out, but I found myself not minding because of the execution. Victor's been around sporadically since season 2, and thus far has only been asked to play a one-note of emotionless, cold enforcer. But I think actor Jeremiah Bitsui stepped up here and adeptly handled the meatier material to the point where his death meant perhaps more than it would have at the start of the hour.

- It's often said that you can measure the strength of a TV show by the way it treats it's minor characters, as pawns to service the story or credible characters in their own right. And the fact that Gilligan can't even kill Victor, quite possibly the show's most inconsequential recurring character, and someone who's racked up an episode count of eight without many viewers noticing he was even there, without making it so it felt as if we were losing a human being. RIP Victor.

- And if you're gonna go, what a way to go. The Gus kills Victor set-piece is one of the most tense, bleak edge of your seat sequences the show has done. And believe me it has done many of them. From the minute Gus enters the lab, his familiar calm, unflappable demeanor just about containing the volcanic rage underneath. Every step he takes stings, and Gilligan knows he's got us here, so he makes everything last that little bit longer, we watch Gus' entire methodical process for slitting someone's throat. He gets changed into a hazmat suit, he washes his hands, he takes off his glasses. He doesn't respond to Walt's desperate/pathetic rantings. Everything without a word.

-Then the moment itself is still somehow surprising and horrific. Watching Gus, a man we've never seen commit an act of violence up to this point, approach the act in the same rational way he approaches everything else, not to mention the very clear message of murder by surrogacy he gives to Walt. That, make no mistake, he wishes he could be doing this to him ,was just awesome. Giancarlo Esposito is just about my favorite performance on the show at this point, in spite of how incredible everyone else, but this was a masterclass to be frank. Everything done with expression, yet everything being underplayed. Emmy's better pay attention.

- Kudos too to Aaron Paul, who by my estimation didn't get a line till around the forty minute mark, and did so much to show how killing Gale has affected him. More darkness seems to be on its way for poor Jesse Pinkman. The scene in the dinner, was almost as chilling. Seeing Jesse become this hardened man, almost unaffected by seeing a man garroted in front of him. It's like he's hit his limit for all the suffering he can take He was just so broken, so for the lack of a better word, dead. This character is going to be awesome this season.

- I liked seeing Gale building the meth super-lab in the cold open but, to be honest that scene felt a little on the nose. Even if I liked that in terms of principles, Gale was a better chemist than Walt. Because for him the chemistry truly came first.

- If I did have a problem with the episode, it was with the Skylar stuff. Now to be clear, I both love Skylar the character and Anna Gunn's terrific performance, but her search for Walt just felt like it was there to give her something to do in the first episode, and while Gunn played it well, particularly the scene where she Broke into Walt's apartment, it felt a little arbitrary. I did like how the show weaved the rest of the cast into little vignettes throughout the episode. Saul's scenes in particular will bring people joy, in which he hires himself a bodyguard that is just exactly the kind of bodyguard Saul would hire, and scans his office for bugs.

- The Hank and Marie stuff was fucking brutal, to say the least. I get the feeling given Hank's level of popularity, it's going to leave quite a few people miffed to watch Hank be so utterly incapacited that he can't even shit by himself, in a harrowing scene in which Marie has to attend to this need, but for me it's going to give Dean Norris and in particularly Betsy Brandt's Marie, the show's most underused character up this point, something to different and new to do with their characters.

- Overall the episode felt a lot like the season 2 episode 'Grilled' in which Tuco held Walt and Jesse hostage in an enclosed space and we weren't sure what he was going to do with them. It was a similar deal here, only the approach to it shows how much this show has grown. While that episode was purely about tension with nothing really going on underneath, and its villain a lunatic who could do anything at any moment, here there was so much subtext, so much that every character, Walt, Jesse, Mike, Victor and Gus were communicating without verbalizing. It's just such a rich show these days.

- I wouldn't say it's quite up there with the best of the show, but it's a fantastic opener, containing one of the best sequences the show has ever done. And I'm ridiculously excited to see where it goes from here.

Rating: 8/10

TV REVIEW: The Killing Season 1

The Killing, a show about stuff that didn't happen that we tell you did, only for it not to have actually happened.

Watching the progression of The Killing from critical darling to emerging disappointment to outright train-wreck has been one of the more interesting sample studies of how difficult it actually is to make great television. The Killing has all the ingredients of what we've come to define as great television in recent years, the requisite darkness, the requisite silences, the requisite character types. It's as if someone has been taking notes, and has got all the pieces in the right place yet when it came time to start moving them, well no-one had any fucking idea. Its a show that had no idea how to go forward, no idea how to develop character, no idea how to make its subject compelling. Everything suffocated in a bland concoction of cop show formula and imitation pathos. Yet back when I saw the pilot I could have not comprehended writing this review. That was a great episode, with a number of good performances and a heart-breaking conclusion. How it could have gone from there to here in 13 weeks is almost astounding.

I guess the only example I can think of even remotely comparable is Heroes, but that did the same trajectory over 3 years and not one, but still. The Killing didn't just go from suck to suck, it had good will to burn, from both its first episode and from the ambiance of being an AMC show, the place that's brought us Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Even the premise lends itself to intrigue, imagine an episode of CSI told in long-form, giving us a chance to layer the characters, deepen the mystery and enrich the universe. But the Killing chose not to do any of these things, instead all it seemed to know how to do was be that same episode of CSI, with the same broad-stroke characters and the same misdirective bullshit only it lasted 13 hours, so it was even more grating and formulaic. Instead of getting to know the suspects of the Rosie Larsen murder, or even Rosie herself, we just got red herring after red herring after red herring. All this amounted to was the show telling you information, then telling you that information was false, then telling your more information, then telling you that was bullshit and so on and so forth. It meant that every episode after the first and before the last was ridiculously disposable in terms of mystery.

Now I wouldn't have minded this so much if we were being told a compelling story in the mean time, but fuck we weren't being told that either. Meet Linden. She's going to Sinoma to marry Leoben from Battlestar Galactica, but then she's into the case, but then she's leaving, but then she's into the case. No clue is given really as to why she's so obsessive nor why she's marrying Leoben, no texture given to their relationship nor any evidence to say why she likes him at all. He's merely a plot point. An excuse to create hollow drama. And as for the whole Bennett Ahmed business, where he was continually flouted as a suspect long after it was clear he didn't do it. Errgh. Billy Campbell's politician has got to be high in the running for the most boring and falt characters television has ever known, and his entire plotline is not only pointless but badly told. It felt like some horrible catch-22 where characters were being sacrificed in lieu of plot, but there was no plot, just endless misdirection. And by doing this of course, the show makes who did it much more important then the journey, and the show chooses this issue to take its subversive stand on. Everything else is same old, same old. But when it came to tell you who did it? We don't feel like it, Go fuck yourself. Se you next year.

I think there's an alternate reality and an alternate version of the killing, when I find this to be the greatest piece of genius ever, but for this one, this hollow shell of a show, it was the only thing we had left. So all we've got left is to return the go fuck yourself in kind and then go on with our lives. I think the saddest thing is that I keep almost thinking I like this show, I like the central performances from Mirelle Enos and Joel Kinnaman. Particularly Kinnaman, whose from the street, rough around the edges stylings go against the clean cut cop norm, and his performance grew to be the most engaging and likable thing about the show. Indeed the episode 'Missing' which came way too late and completely kaput any momentum the show built, was a pretty good episode, a feeble imitation of Mad Men's ' The Suitcase' sure, but it was rewarding to see Kinnaman break through Enos' barriers and give the impression that a partnership was forming here. And then what do they to the only successfully realized character they managed to create, oh yeah they undercut everything by making him some political middle-man bad guy. So that's the mystery element checked off, and now the one interesting relationship we managed to build amidst our scrambling? Well that's gone too. See you next year folks.

This is a show that simply had no idea how tell a story, no idea how to subvert police procedural to serialized television and no idea how to create an engaging character of any kind. Oh except the one, which we promptly blow the fuck up. Terrible television emphasized by the sense of betrayal and disappointment. Under a different set of writers The Killing is a slam-dunk, a great show in a line of great shows. As it stands, its the fastest self-destructing show television has ever known. A monumental failure and a misfire to make one feel the need to apologize to Heroes. Well maybe not that far.

Rating: 5/10

TV REVIEW: United States Of Tara Season 3

I have at least eight, possibly nine people in my head.

United States of Tara was one of those shows I can't entirely say why I kept watching, I simply just did. Dealing with the adventures of wife and mother Toni Collette dealing with her family, whilst having DID, it always had elements and aspects I liked but was always frustrating and inconsistent in equal measure. Its first season was kind of more bad then it was good, the second ironed out a lot of the kinks and was fun to watch but didn't really go anywhere, with everyone off in their own subplot until everything converged in a big mess. I preferred it to the first, but something was still missing for me. I mean Toni Collette's performance was always great, but the writing always felt a little aimless. That and the Diablo Cody dialogue, which I'd say had about a 1/3 clever to smug ratio and really made the thing become unbearable at times.

But season three wasn't just better, it was decidedly so. It was as if the show had somehow gleaned everything that wasn't working, or most of it at least and finally began acknowledging everything that was fucked up about the premise. Multiple-personalities makes for some wacky hijinks certainly, but growing up with that around you and having that be part of your everyday life is something close to horrifying and I felt that this was never dealt with satisfactorily enough. It was a dark premise played for light comedy, with its more hardened qualities mostly washed over. But this year the show dove headfirst in to correcting that, becoming the darker, more twisted show it had flirted with before and put together one of the best seasons of TV last year had to offer, which played both as a dark family comedy and - as weird as it is to say - a slasher movie. It also brought the best out of Collette, who did the best work she's done on the show this year, playing both the hero and villain of the show and deserving an Emmy emphatically. Of course given the fact that it has been cancelled by Showtime, that probably won't happen, but still. It was awesome, and I can't recommend it enough.

Perhaps part of the problem of Tara in the past is that none of the cast has been able to keep pace with Collette, and there's been no-one for her to act off but herself. Yet the addition of Eddie Izzard as a professor who takes an extra-curricular interest in Tara was a master stroke. Not only because it provided the audience with a character as fascinated by her condition as we were supposed to be, but because Izzard was just terrific. The best I've ever seen him be probably. A genius stand-up, I've never really been convinced by his abilities as an actor in the past, perhaps with the exception of his terrific performance in The Riches, but here he just knocked it the fuck out, and his scenes with Collette were amongst the best television to be found this year. It was almost detrimental to the rest of the show how engaging this became after a while.

Supposing it would be bad form to throw the slasher movie aspect at you without clarifying, Collette develops a new personality, to go with her quite expansive current collection, a 15 year old abusive boy named Bryce, who goes about killing the other personalities in an effort to claim her body for himself. In turn this spins the whole family into a spiral, impacting everyone's life and making her not only unpredictable to be around, but also dangerous. Bryce is a pretty terrifying creation, and while it seems obvious to say Collette plays the role incredibly, it makes the most interesting aspect of the show seeing his affect on other people. Particularly Izzard and John Corbett's Max, the latter being always the most impenetrable character on the series finally gets dealt with in a genuine way beyond, the long-suffering husband character. I'd still say the main problem with the show is that it doesn't know what to do with the kids, so it sends them on empty subplot odyssey's that tend to go nowhere, but Brie Larsen and Keir Gilchrist are strong enough actors not to make it too unbearable. And similarly, the show is tremendously enjoyable, the darkness building up throughout the season in lieu of lighter stuff at the beginning. It manages to be fun, not simply heavy.

But ultimately, I think this season of the show worked much more for me because it was the first year where they knew where they wanted to go, and it was a place that made for some fantastically engaging television. I criticize the Dexter model a lot, you know where everyone on your show is so shit you need to bring in a caliber guest star to keep up with your leading man, but here it was a terrifically beneficial step, and in a way allowing there to be an actor not blown of the screen by Collette made it an altogether more fascinating watch. That and a forty year old actress playing a teenage male serial killer and the whole thing playing out like a Brian De Palma movie with Juno dialogue.

Rating: 8/10

TV REVIEW: Community Season 2

Cool, cool, cool, cool.

This season of Community felt very much like a show from the mindset of a guy who assumed he was going to be cancelled. Everything about the show's genre-swapping, relentlessly meta stylings seemed to say fuck accessibility, let's just do what we want because we're living on borrowed time anyway. And that mentality has allowed for some of the most interesting, adventurous television out there, that in its audacity is pretty awe-inspiring. Season two of Community has undoubtedly pushed the boundaries of what can be done in a sitcom, and in many cases for people's conception of what a sitcom is. And for that it's almost impossible not to fall in love with this show critically, because it's almost a piece of criticism in and of itself. Yet there have been more than a few grumblings that in exceeding our wildest dreams at the complex (Structure, subject matter, scale) Community has failed to succeed at the simple, which is to say its ever so slightly less funny and its characters are ever so slightly broader to compensate for the ambitious mission statement of the season.

Yet what that mission statement has allowed for has been kind of extra-ordinary. I could make a pretty comprehensive best of episodes list solely from what this show has given me, because each time an episode blows my mind, it seems to do so in an entirely different way. ' Epidemology' for having the balls to put a legit zombie outbreak in the context of a sitcom and being so awesome, 'Co-operative Calligraphy' for it's ingenious use of the bottle-episode trait, 'Mixology Certification' for thankfully reminding me there can be some emotional sincerity in this universe, ' Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas' for managing to be the show's sweetest and darkest episode at the same time, you could go on. I think my favorite episode of this season though is ' Critical Film Studies, or the 'My Dinner With Andre episode', something I would say is the only absolute no holds barred success at blending the referencing and such in a real emotional place for the characters, and being hilarious and sad at the same time. In many ways it sort of showed the counterbalanced what the show once was and what it had become, seeing Abed (In an emmy worthy performance by Danny Pudi) trying to reconnect with Jeff via the means of a referencing a movie where two people have a reconnecting conversation.

Abed, a movie obsessed, borderline aspergers' stricken student, has very much been the protagonist of this season, as he kind of had to be by default as in many ways we shifted into seeing the world from his perspective what with the parodying becoming a more structural part of the show, and not simply Abed's dissenting voice, whereas in season one we saw it from Jeff's perspective, an outsider in a world of misfits. Abed's need to communicate With Jeff and his inability to do so out of the safety of movie-referencing hit a very strong note, and feels to me to be the place the show is in. It wants to have emotionally real characters, and it tries incessantly to do so, but it increasingly doesn't feel safe outside of the world of pop culture, and ironically the one episode that managed to be gloriously both dealt with this exact issue. Oh the meta. Another episode I greatly enjoyed was 'Intermediate Documentary Film-making' perhaps the funniest half hour of the show, and also one of the most intense.

Yet I don't want to give the impression I don't like the big theme episodes, because I really, really do. I think they are what the show does best, speaking in an informed and often hilarious way about these various pop-culture touchstones, and like Abed, its in these episodes the show feels most comfortable being raw with the characters, with that barrier of irony to protect it. Pierce had an arc that seemed to take place exclusively in these episodes, which saw his villainy escalate until it just became insane that the group would continue to accept him as a friend, something I was going to lobby as a criticism against the show until it was dealt with in the finale, seeing Pierce seemingly out of the study group for the time being.

Despite some of the problems I had with his character though, I'd have to say Chevy Chase knocked it out of the stratosphere this season. Honestly I think has been the best performance in a near flawless cast, showing some dramatic chops Chase has never exhibited before and excelling in his role as villain in both the dungeons and dragons and Hospital episodes so well it almost added to the problem. Chase was too good, too convincingly rotten that why anyone would have him in their life by choice became something increasingly hard to believe, yet if anyone deserves awards recognition this season, I think it should be Chase. It's been some great work. I'd lobby some similar praise at Donald Glover, who has been consistently the funniest person on the show, and obviously Pudi, who shows so much range its very easy to miss, but to be honest the entire cast is fantastic, the best ensemble on TV outside of Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Even Yvette Nicole Brown's Shirley is a character I enjoy, not because she's all that funny necessarily, but because she's a well drawn and consistent character.

Sadly I don't think I can say that about all the characters though. While some have been greatly served, others have been a might inconsistent. Particularly Jeff Winger, in an excellent performance by Joel McHale which the show increasingly looks at a loss with how to deal with, Community's one time lead who's been banished into the wasteland of goofed-up straight-men, being increasingly broadened to the point that he's a much less interesting character then he was in the first season. Similarly Ken Jeong's Chang worked as a one-note villain last year, but this year has had him just float around aimlessly, having absolutely no idea what role he plays or place he holds. Perhaps this is necessary to enable some of the grand things Community wants to do. But as a consequence the parody episodes driven by ideas and concepts are invariably stronger then smaller episodes of character driven comedy, bringing in to question whether it's raised the stakes so much it can't even execute those at all anymore, because its hard to care about Britta accidentally kissing a lesbian after you've just watched the most elaborate, awesomely executed Dungeons and Dragons parody.

Or perhaps because the parody episodes almost always require close to dramatic performances, in which everyone takes the reality seriously and intensely, meaning that its feels a cheat just to slide back into everyone acting goofy. For me this season of Community has been about putting the chapter above the book, so to speak, in which its been more important to create a great twenty minutes of television then it is to put together a great season, and while there are maybe 10 episodes in and amongst that are blow-your-mind magnificent, its meant that tonally the year hasn't flowed all that well, and more importantly some of the characters just aren't all that coherent.

These frustrations come simply because I love this show so much, and I would firmly stand-by that the outstanding highlights allow for the messy whole and I find myself having absolutely no problem with forgiving a show this immensely ambitious, this immensely entertaining and this game-changing. People will grow up and want to work in TV because of Community, its truly a landmark and while it's not quite my favorite comedy of the year, that would be Archer because I laughed a lot more, its certainly the most important, fulfilling on that first year promise of following no rules and endlessly raising the game with its seemingly boundless creativity. A fucking awesome show by any definition and seriously Emmy's. Come on.

Best Three episodes:

1) Critical Film Studies

2) Intermediate Documentary Film-making

3) Epidemology

Rating: 8/10

The X Files Season One: "Squeeze" - Stretch and Tooms

So that's how santa claus does it...

I'm glad this episode came this early, because I was getting a little worried about preemptively committing myself to a show I was only ever going to think was OK, but Squeeze showed me a side of the show that is willing to be a horror movie, willing to be out and out scary as opposed to an effective but unknowably menacing atmosphere. In the previous two episodes the villains were unseen and unaccountable, but here the villain takes centre stage, and I have to say that even though Squeeze is probably a less intelligent episode then those previously, it's a damn sight more effective then either. Complexity can make for great sci-fi, but so can simplicity.

- In a way Squeeze is the most obvious incarnation of The X Files 'cop show with monsters' twist, in that this is a straight forward serial killer narrative, only the serial killer has a few supernatural tricks up his sleeve. Perhaps because of its increased obedience to the deafeningly familiar cop-show structure, more time was freed up to simply do cooler shit. Or maybe it just had an antagonist memorable enough to make anything work. Either way, I enjoyed the crap out of this episode, which dispensed with some of the conspiracy and upped the creepy considerably.

- The plot sees a series of people getting murdered in locked rooms, with no known method of entry or exit. An old agency contact of Scully's (Played by Terriers' Donal Logue) brings her in on the case, and everyone makes fun of her for working on the X Files.

- What I did like about the episode is that there was never any doubt about who the killer was, the first suspect being the only suspect. a Eugene Tooms, a man with the ability to elongate his body to squeeze into all manor of tight spots. So kind of a horror movie answer to the question how does Father Christmas get down the chimney. I concept it sounds a little silly, but thanks to a supremely creepy performance by Doug Hutchison, Tooms is a pretty iconoc bad guy.

- I did notice the banter between Mulder and Scully feeling a little less stiff this week, with Gillian Anderson in particular developing a wry sarcasm amidst Scully's usual idealized pragmatism. Duchovny gets better I think, but it still feels like line-reading rather then acting at the moment. And he continues to be the worst actor at listening ever known to man.

- The Tooms kill scenes were pretty cool, although the second one was much better then the first one, probably because he no longer remained unseen. Watching him go down the chimney was one of the creepier things I've seen in a TV show for a long time.

- Not sure how I felt about the character of Colton, Scully's agency pal though. Felt like an easy way to pass the torch of skeptic to show us that Scully's coming around to Mulder's way of thinking. Did enjoy the scenes of Mulder openly mocking Colton though, perhaps because he's such a rote character for a procedural show. One that every show roles it when they want to show you the straight man warming to the maverick's way of thinking. Like Donal Logue though.

- Tooms is over 100 years old, having committed a similar rash of killings in both 1903, 1933, and 1973. He does this by taking all of his victim's livers, absorbing them, and hibernating in a nest made of newspaper and his own bile for periods in between murders. Pretty cool right.

- Perhaps the final showdown was a little less then well executed. They defeated Tooms by handcuffing him to a bath, but couldn't he just elongate his fingers to escape the cuffs, or maybe he just wanted to get caught who knows. But an easy way out.

- It also was the most cliched slasher movie sequence ever, with Scully running a bath, whilst Tooms stalked around her apartment.

- Like I said, I don't think Squeeze is necessarily the most intelligent or progressive episode of the X-Files, but there's something to be said for just hitting you're audience in the gut, and I think this was an important side of the show to reveal, because the problem with a conspiracy show is that you have a long-term faceless enemy, whose stature is drawn from that namelessness, its good to have bad guy on the screen every once in a while.

- Doug Hutchison's performance does kind of bring to light an immediate concern I had with the show, which was the lack of a supporting cast, and given that while Anderson and Duchovny are growing into their roles, it would be still nice to have an actor's who is always good on the show, because at times the bad acting is the show's Achilles heel. It stops you really committing to some of the scenes, which is a shame.

- I liked that Tooms was mostly quite animalistic, he had no speeches or reasons why, rather just an organism doing what it has to do to survive.

- While I did think the Scully-Mulder dialogue was better, some of Colton's dialogue was awful. One interchange between him and Scully was pretty laughable containing a line like ' If this is what it takes to climb the ladder, then I can't wait to watch you fall on your ass.' It was kind of made awesome by Anderson's extremely reluctant delivery of it. Almost as if she knew it was a piece of shit line.

- The final scene of Tooms staring at the letter-box slot on his cell door lasted forever, and was pretty fucking terrifying. I guess they knew they were onto something, so they didn't kill him. I look forward to his inevitable re-appearance in a lesser episode.

- Oh I almost forgot, there was an entire subplot about a cop who chased Tooms in 33' that took place in about two scenes. He gave a bizarre, pointless monologue about how places where bad things happen smell of evil, and then segued right in to giving Mulder the evidence to solve the case. Bizarre character and scene.

- Its stuff like that that makes me think The X Files is stuck in some netherworld between a cheesy 80's cop show and a progressive, intellectual sci-fi series. It's just fused both realities together regardless of whether they fit or not. At the moment there's some tonal irregularities for sure.

- A lean, mean slasher-movie of an episode. Which ditched larger arcing for the sake of scaring the shit out of you, and for the most part it was largely effective. Its still got the rough around the edges feel, and a worryingly blase attitude toward specificity and the reality of its universe but its bigger picture approach does allow for some of the ideas to shine. Creepy as balls.

Rating: 7/10

Battlestar Galactica Season One: "Bastille Day" - It's Allegory Time, Feel Lucky?

Some joke about putting people in cages. I'm tired.

Ah, the first glimpse of Battlestar Galactica, the sledgehammer subtle political allegory machine. To be honest that's probably a bit mean, in the latter years it got a little less all up in you face with this stuff, but there was always a near overwhelming level of earnestness to it, mostly tied to the character of Lee Adama. And while it's an admirable for a show, let alone a genre show, to tackle modern politics in such an upfront way, you can't help but feel you've slipped into a fancy dress version of a sixth form debate at times.

-This isn't the last of this, and I think they get better at it as the show goes along, but in all honesty I can't say 'Bastille Day' entirely worked for me. Perhaps I'm just too cynical to be preached at in such a steadfast way, but there you go.

- It wasn't a complete washout though, much of the stuff working at the side of the main plot I found enjoyable, but it's hard to commit to liking an episode when its main thrust doesn't really work for you.

- So, at the end of last week they found a water planet, yay, but it turns out everything is frozen to shit and it will require some merciless labor to extract it. So Adama decides that a ship full of prisoners is probably the best bet, but Lee Adama objects to this because these guys aren't slaves etc, so they decide to offer a labor equals freedom policy. Work the water planet, get free.

- Already I think Lee Adama is the most problematic character in the series. They sell him as both a loyal military man and unflinching idealist, someone who kills people because he's told to yet is supposed to be someone who is a firm believer in a liberal morality. Which of these guys he is tends to depend on what scene he's in, and its never very consistent from when he's a protagonist of an episode, such as here, or a supporting character such as '33'. One problem Lost always had is that characters would devolve back to their broader interpretations when they weren't the focus of an episode, but with Lee Adama that gear switch is even more extreme.

- So of course, the prisoners mobilized by a Tom Zarek, a terrorist/prisoner of conscience take everyone hostage. This leads to several political discussions between Lee and Zarek, a character I liked and actor Richard Hatch does well to lend something more to him then to be a walking talking point, on the nature of oppression, what it means to be free and if terrorism is justified. I don't mind shows doing this, but this isn't a delicate example of how intelligent political discussion should go, to say the least. I think the word is ham-fisted.

- The episode did something smart making recurring characters the hostages instead of regulars, because A) it made you think they could die. B) it fleshed out some of the recurring characters, from president's aide Billy, Pilot Dualla, and Cally the assistant mechanic. All of whom had just had exposition before this, so it was a nice touch to see them get some meatier scenes.

- But the psycho prisoner tries to rape Cally bit was a little obvious.

- Cool Baltar/Starbuck moments of the week, she gives the most unprofessional/hilarious miltary reprimand ever, and Baltar has his imaginary girlfriend tell him how to make a Cylon detector using a nuclear Bomb. Great stuff from Tricia Helfer in that scene, who is increasingly feeling like this show's secret weapon.

- If I hadn't seen the show before, I'd be rooting for Zarek to be a recurring character anyway, mostly because even if I didn't like this episode all that much, its a good performance and it feels like there's more to get at there.

- For some reason I didn't think Mary McDonnell was very good in this episode, she seemed a little detached and rushed her lines. I'm sure its just an anomaly, or that I have brain damage.

- The episode resolved itself rather weakly, with rapist prisoner causing a commotion that both allowed Lee to kill him and to point a gun at Zarek and get everyone to call it off. It was good to see him being true to his idealism, and I liked the fact that that he stood up to both Commander Adama and Roslin, but the character doesn't make any sense at the moment.

- Allegory is a difficult nut to crack, because you have to be true to what you want to say but also true to the reality of your universe, and I felt Moore just pushed things a little obviously toward things we would recognize, such as terrorism etc. I also had a problem with Lee essentially forcing the prisoners to take his deal, by all rights he should believe in their right to tell him no too.

- Some good stuff with Tigh, also peripheral to the main story, as his alcoholism begins to feature more drastically.

- Overall a flawed episode, that just seemed to be trying way too hard. It felt like the kind of standalone episode you get while show-runners are spinning their wheels. It's a necessary evil, particularly at the start of a show, when you've got characters to introduce and worlds to establish, but in hindsight they always feel the weakest. What you gonna do.

Rating: 5/10

The X Files Season One: "Deep Throat" - Unidentified Flying Objects

I'll put this in my field report!

I'm glad I'm watching this weekly instead of on marathon, because The X Files is such a bleak show at its core, where the message reiterated is that the house always wins and it crushes your face for good measure. It's a show about questions that have answers always an inch out of reach, and while it's still rough around the edges at the moment, only two episodes in I can feel the atmosphere growing on me already, even if there's yet to be an episode that bowls me over. I can feel it coming though, any moment now.

- So our plot this week involves a US military pilot with a name way too difficult to spell, having a psychotic break, and upon the military police's arrival to fuck him up, they find him cowering in the corner, covered in sores looking pretty crazy. Mulder thinks that the pilot is part of a secret program to blend UFO technology with regular military aircraft. Because of course he does.

- David Duchovny's performance in The X Files is bad, but it can be kind of awesome if you let. I loved the scene where the woman whose husband got nabbed by the military was like 'how will I support my family', Duchovny made a sound equivalent to 'ergh'. He stopped just short of saying that's why they're called your problems. He doesn't seem to be listening to anyone who's not Gillian Anderson, too awesome is he to look guest stars in the eye.

- Someone who I assume to be a recurring character was introduced this week, a fairly generic government type called Deep Throat. See what they did there. Yeah. Chris Carter nailed that one. He's fairly superfluous to the episode, showing up almost as an afterthought at the beginning and the end. Meh on that guy.

- I liked the concept at the centre of this episode, but I think they were kind of vague with it. Deliberately of course, but sci-fi is smarter with specificity and particularly because this was kind of a grounded idea, military accessorizing their planes with some alien hubcaps, but it was treated with the same kind of mysterious reverence as last week's aliens, and I;m not sure that was a good idea.

- The procedural aspects of the show haven't quite found their footing just yet, while I think the characterization is fine, the plots seem to peter out too early, Carter definitely telegraphs the resolution of the mystery half way through the episode if not before. He doesn't seem all that onvested in making that aspect of the show rewarding. Although it could just be the lottery of the stand-alone show, some weeks are strong, others less so. The plotting hasn't been the show's forte yet though.

- Seth Green! Or as he will be forever known Oz from Buffy, playing the most stereotypical stoner teenager ever. Like totally rad dude.

- The wife of the military pilot is perhaps the most plot device a human being can possibly be.

- The X-Files does well not to portray small-towners as hicks, most of them seem to be onto the governments tricks and seem to react to situations in a non-retarded manor. A rare feat for a procedural show.

- The sci-fi horror of the week was actually quite clever. Telling us that the aircraft were so advanced it was beyong human capacity to pilot them, so prolonged cockpit time left you with your brain fried. Or as Mulder says ' How much human cost is necessary to build a better machine?'

- There should be a drinking game, in which you drink every time Scully mentions her field report.

- Very dark ending. Mulder lays eyes on the freaky planes, then is abducted by the military and has his brain wiped, in a very bleak scene. Isn't he supposed to be our badass hero? So the way it pans out, the audience gets the information, but Scully and Mulder basically get beat down by the conspirators. That's like a cop show having the criminals win every week.

- Gillian Anderson is also growing on me, gets a chance to be a little less square in this one. Some supporting cast would be nice, but I guess this photogenic, charmingly wooden twosome will do for now.

- Again solid, but not quite great. Perhaps the like of a compelling villain as of yet is the problem. The dark turn in the latter half of the episode means I got more out of it, and it took further steps to setting up a master plot, or at least a master arc. The deep throat guy is a very generic, easy way to do that though. Still, getting better and shaking off the rustiness as it goes.

Rating: 6/10

Battlestar Galactica Season One: " Water" - My Mind Made Of Nuts And Bolts

Water would probably freeze in space right? Whatever, it looks awesome.

- A quick touch-base with the characters before we get going to avoid further confusion. Commander Adama, is the tough but fair, high-ranking military officer on board Galactica, His son Lee is a pilot/squadron captain dealing with issues of idealism, Starbuck is a girl pilot, only hates everyone and everything in the most awesome way, Baltar is a genius scientist who unbeknown to everyone caused the end of the world, and also hallucinates an apparition of the Cylon model (number Six) that seduced and betrayed him. The Cylons are our robot villains who look both like humans and terminator like monsters, Boomer is a pilot who is also a cylon sleeper agent, something she doesn't even know herself, Laura Roslin is the interim president of the human race, Helo, the soldier stuck on a nuclear ravaged planet, Tyrol is an engineer and Saul Tigh is Adama's right hand man. Exhale.

- OK, without further ado lets get into ' Water'. Ron Moore made the good decision to nominally have each episode to focus on a character, but not have the arc narrative and the rest of the cast disappear, like what happened in the earlier years of Lost. Instead we continue to build the world, yet give each character a turn in the spotlight to deepen and such. 'Water' was the turn of Boomer, our unknowingly villainous cylon sleeper agent.

- Now the concept of the 'mole' is something run into the ground with serialized action/adventure shows. Usually played for maximum mystery points, BSG is doing something a little different with it. It tells us Boomer is a cylon from the get go, and rather play the character as a plot point, it's exploring Boomer betraying her adopted family and friends against her will, and the effect it has on her, rather then just for a holy shit it was her moment.

- The arresting opening sequence sees Boomer in the ship's armoury, covered in water with no idea how she get there. I love the amount of visual ways Moore tells his story. We go on to find that boomer has in her sleeper cylon state, planted C4 in the ship's water tank, the subsequent explosion of which vastly minimizes the fleet's supply of water. A desperate Boomer recruits sometime boyfriend Tyrol to help her cover it up.

- I won't say Grace Park gives a good performance as Boomer, because she doesn't. Not really. She's kind of wooden in this episode, but Moore's writing of the character makes her interesting enough to watch anyway. Park isn't the worst actress in the world, but she's a little flat is all I'm saying. Aaron Douglas gets to give Tyrol a little more texture in this episode, a character perhaps the most under-developed of the regulars at this point.

- The slow opening was a nice. calming touch after the fast-paced ride that was last week's episode. It's nice to see quiet moments in any sci-fi show, but seeing characters like Tigh. Lee, Roslin and Adama alone, in moments they're not bound by military exposition is important for their characters.

- Ah, the beginnings of Lee Adama, political idealist are seen in this episode. I hate that guy.

- Enjoyed the calm way everyone dealt with the disaster, rather then resorting to hysterics. It gives the impression that life-threatening situations are a daily occurrence. Which of course they are.

- I don't know quite how I feel about the Boomer/Tyrol plot except to say that it makes Boomer more interesting and Tyrol less interesting. Doing anything for love is one thing, but helping out someone when they've clearly stolen and used explosives against your friends, and by all logic can only be a cylon agent is definitely another. Don't be such a sap, tyrol.

- Some prime Baltar in this episode, from his blase, could give less of a shit attitude in the tactical meeting to his sexually charged card game with Starbuck. Good times. Starbuck is already my second favorite character, she plays the assholeness with a creditable humor. It makes it fun and not taxing. Enjoyed that rare scene between them very much.

- Edward James Olmos' performance as Adama is easy to ignore, but its a very savvy, emotionally rooted one. As is that of Mary McDonnell as Roslin. Old people are always good actors aren't they?

- Also, the comedy stylings of Tricia Helfer anyone? The way she delivered 'you have a friend' as Gaeta followed Baltar around made me laugh out loud.

- Our Helo sideplot on Caprica doesn't really go anywhere this week, just him continuing to get closer to the other Boomer Cylon. They shall robot/human sex very soon.

- Boomer is part of the search team going out looking for H20 and of course she's the one to find it, and kind of has to fight her way through her programming to tell her flight buddy. I kind of liked that scene, but do wish Park could have brought more to it.

- I always say a show's second episode should be its worst, because it has to continue to world build yet without the novelty of the pilot. Yet for the most part 'Water' was a pretty solid outing, setting up the world, the hierarchy of the miltary and the government, the continuing saga of Baltar and Boomer's A story pretty effectively. It had a lot to get through and did it mostly effectively. It lacked a little of the flair and style of last week's episode, but that was inevitable.

- What's effective is that BSG is less at the whim of whose episode it is, and is capable of producing a compelling episode about one of the less then compelling characters. Solid if not extraordinary.

Rating: 6/10

The X Files Season One: " Pilot" - Should You Go Down To The Woods Today

I Want to believe. I'm sorry but grown ass Mulder wouldn't have that in his office.

This will be an interesting experiment for me, because while I've seen episodes of The X Files here and there I've seen much too little of it, and certainly nothing out of the first season. And while the show's critical reputation is holding, I'm getting the sense that nobody is watching The X-Files anymore. Buffy holds strong, yet the most successful genre series of all time, at least in terms of viewers (nobody watched Star Trek until way after), the colossus of a genre everybody complains is too often marginalized, is apparently not worth watching for the direct subsequent generation? I'm not one to point fingers, I've seen every episode of Buffy at least twice and not a single complete season of the X-Files. So I think its time to put that right, and discover whether this show for all its supposed influence, actually holds up. Without further etc.

- Its easy to understand the show's mass appeal almost instantly. Its essentially a detective show with a twist. We've still got detectives solving murder cases, only they're FBI Agents and instead of the culprits being gangsters and serial killers, we've got Aliens and monsters. Score for one for The X Files as opposed to Law And Order, is that while there's only so many variations on psychopath, aliens and monsters adds another dimension, one where you can be intrigued by the idea even if the episode itself doesn't work all that well.

- The episode's introductory scene couldn't be more alien abduction for dummies though. But that's exactly the point I suppose. Ingratiate you into the world with familiar imagery and all that. Girl in pajamas wondering through the woods, bright lights, she looks up amazed and then we cut to the morning and she's dead. The cops exchange suspicious glances and one of them implies that this isn't the first time. Cue Credits.

- Gillian Anderson has done some interesting work post Files, she was very good in Bleak House, amongst other things, but Scully looks like the worst role in the world at this point. It sucks to be the skeptic in a sci-fi show, because you're always wrong. But Anderson is making it work best she can, selling both the naivete and the intelligence of Scully.

- I love how 90's TV shows don't give a shit about delicacy, just had a 5 minutes scene which not only introduced the show's main character, but also the show's central thesis, the Scully-Mulder dynamic, Mulder's main motivation and the narrative of this week's episode. Working up to stuff is for WIMPS.

- Duchovny is maybe trying a little too hard as Mulder. I think he's capable of being a good actor, in the specifically right circumstance, because he's got an innate roguish charm/douche thing going on, but he is always asked to play intelligent characters and that i find harder to swallow. Call him TV's Keanu Reeves.

- Still as hero names go, you could do worse then Fox Mulder. That's badass.

- So a series of girls are being found with the exact same unidentifiable marks on their back, naturally Mulder thinks some nasty Aliens are afoot. Scully thinks there must be a rational explanation for all this. I think that line should be banned from TV and Movies.

- What I do like, is that its setting up the conspiracy angle nicely, the villains of this show, both alien and human, are unseen. So it has a nice us vs. The World quality, but also a sense that they're fighting a losing battle. I like this tone.

- Mulder's one-liners are having a very low rate of conversion though, When he and Scully exhumed the body of one of the victim's and the corpse looked positively Alien, cracking jokes didn't really seem appropriate. Particularly for a man on a passionate crusade for validation and answers. Still got to be that maverick cop I suppose.

- Suspects are a mysterious cop, a morgue attendant, a comatose boy and his crazy chick friend. I think we all know who its going to be. I mean beside the aliens of course.

- Very cynical Scully shower scene/fake-out. She thought she had the alien mark, but it turns out it was just mosquito bites. As long as we got her in bra and panties, says Fox studios.

- A kind of cool scene, where Mulder and Scully lose 10 minutes of time instantaneously. Something mysterious is going on. Yeah.

- Our second exposition scene is more character based, Mulder explains his 8 year old sister just disappeared one night, no warning, no trace. It's what drives him on his crusade to prove aliens exists, coz you know he hopes they took her.

- I instantly hope his sister disappeared for human reasons, instead of supernatural ones. Would be poignant. Chance of that happening equals zero though.

- Anderson grows on you as the episode progresses. It's a difficult role, but she is likable and a reasonable enough audience surrogate. This episode's plot though is kind of weak. Such is the lottery with stand-alone cop dramas. You roll the dice with that shit every week.

- So it was in fact comatose boy, under guidance from the aliens who abducted him at his graduation, with an assist from his cop dad. Guest characters all drawn pretty broadly though.

- The final confrontation scene was kind of poetic, in its own rough around the edges kind of way. The advantages of sci-fi, in a procedural series. Shit can at least be different.

- Probably a better pilot then it is a stand-alone episode. The world is well established, and I dug the conspiracy element, the final scene of a ominous man who was in a few scenes but had no lines, jacking Scully's evidence and taking it to a top secret Pentagon base was a nice, Good guys lose in this world moment. The whodunit of the week story was a little predictable and rushed but, it had a lot to get through. Potential problems? Well at the moment it seems like an exclusively two character series. Not sure about that. Duchovny and Anderson both have their merits, but I'm not sure they can engage me on their own forty minutes a week.

- I also think the strength of each episode is going to be a monster of the week lottery, but having said that there's promise here. And if it goes a more mythological route then they may be something unique. I guess we'll see. But it set up a dark tone well and right now, intrigued if not invested. But something tells me I may be soon.

Rating: 6/10

TV REVIEW: Archer Season 2

Relax. It was just cancer sex.

It wouldn't be too off base to say this has been a banner year for television comedy, what with so many shows coming into their own, from Louie to Community to Parks and Recreation. The understood limitation of what television comedy can do has been moved so many times I wouldn't even know how to pin-point where it is anymore. Yet I'm going to say that Archer, this season at least, has been the best. Because while some shows have pushed boundaries and some shows have been mind-blowingly hilarious, I think Archer might be the only one to be consistently outstanding at both. Something in this season of Archer just clicked, going from what was an always amusing if scatty Season 1 to a gloriously confident, always hilarious yet much more focused second season. It managed to keep the insane amount of laughs yet layer them with smartly told character stories, and in doing so became the best season of anything thus far into 2011.

Archer's success this year is even more impressive when you consider that at its core its a black comedy. Something that traditionally doesn't work all that well on American television, I think in part because of the greater episode count, and in part because Black comedy can become tedious in long form very quickly, however funny it is. Perhaps because characters are often the one constant in sitcoms, so watching writers revel in their misfortune week in week out becomes a decidedly arduous experience you can't latch on to, let alone have any investment in and eventually it just becomes depressing. I think Two And Half Men is the darkest show on network television, devised entirely around the bad guy taking pleasure in the good guy's failings, the rich guy laughing at the poor guy, and the cynical guy laughing at the earnest guy. That's the show, and the trap black comedy always ends up falling into, becoming a platform for writers to spit shit at people who don't share their values. Archer avoids that, because while its a very dark show, its humor comes from the characters, you laugh with them more then you laugh at them, and humor is only occasionally drawn from bully-porn, which is of course the best way to sieve that particular well.

The show's ensemble is ridiculously strong. In the first season, there was very much the sense of the show figuring out what to do with its supporting cast whilst Archer himself (in a endlessly ingenious voice-over performance by H. Jon Benjamin.) carried the show. This year every character has a defined identity and is capable of being hilarious. I'd almost say every supporting character could be the lead of a show I would watch. I particularly enjoy Judy Greer's Cheryl, who makes possibly the thinnest character into one of the most hilarious, almost purely on the strength of her delivery. Its almost needless to say Jessica Walter is great as Archer's mother Mallory, because what else would you have expected. The show made a very wise decision to add season 1 recurrers Krieger and Gillette to the mix on a regular basis, both acting as all-purpose joke-hitters, both played terrificly deadpan. But it's Archer's show and boy is that character a force of awesome this season, with Benjamin nailing every line whilst staying true to character at the same time.

This was most notable in the mini-masterpiece that was 'Placebo Effect', in which a cancer ravaged Archer went on a rampage against those who had tampered with his medication. It merged so many of the elements that have really come to the fore the season. The growing confidence, the character led story, the dark comedy and an increased sense of adventurousness into one 20 minute package that exceeded even raised expectations. It was one of those episodes, not too dissimilar to Community's 'Modern Warfare', where you knew you were watching a classic as it was one and as the thing got better and better, you pretty much want to stop and applaud at the end. Some good shit. Amazing really, because I never would have thought Archer was going to top ' The Double Deuce', was filled in the back story on Archer's aged manservant Wodehouse to poignant/deeply amusing effect. But what was great about this season of archer was that it kept topping itself, but not necessarily by raising the stakes or bending the reality, but by going from a cynical show with some hilarious cyphers to a show where each episode's plot was less disposable, and contributed to a larger arc or served to layer the character. It became funnier by getting more detailed, by caring where things came from and where they went, so a seed layed in episode 6 could be paid off in episode 12. Or in other words, it built a universe, with an increasing number of characters, as the best television comedies like The Simpsons or Arrested Development do.

What I loved about this season of Archer, is it had that drive to be better every week, to try new and ever more daring things week to week, and for that enough it would be one of my favorite shows. But what's amazing is that it's managed to be fucking hilarious to a degree that one wouldn't have thought possible with all this storytelling going on. The modern '30 Rock' rule says that a sitcom has laughs in it, if it tries to tell a story in an episode. Plots are used to mine laughs and abandoned for something else to get more laughs. The best shows though manage the balance, and Archer more then any show airing right now, is doing that perfectly.

Rampage.

Rating: 9/10

Battlestar Galactica Season One: " 33"- Eyes On The Clock And The Road

Maybe one day, you can have small little toasters of your own.

I watch a lot of TV, and one of the selfish benefits of being such an anal retentive viewer is that I get to pass shows on to whatever social group I may be involved with at any given moment, and look all smart and awesome. And while I've turned a lot of people onto a lot of shows, I've never successfully turned anyone on to Battlestar Galactica. I've known a couple of people who've liked it, but they came pre-affiliated. For all my nagging, screaming and crying that moment of conversion has never happened, and with consideration I've decided to take the cause to the streets, and every Thursday I'll recap a new episode of this endlessly enterprising, smart and unique show. It's going to be my first large scale re-watch too, so personally I am very much looking forward to re-immersing into this universe.

- Having said this of course, I've got a sneaking feeling that Season One may be quite a bit worse then the seasons that followed it, so I guess we'll find out if that's true.

- Maybe not though, because '33' for the most part is a crisp and well-executed episode. Ingratiating us again with the universe after the mini-series, whilst being a pretty thrilling chase movie of an episode at the same time. The downfall of so many first episodes is they get too caught up explaining to actually be engaging as their own story, but this one manages to dodge that bullet, showcasing many of the shows intentions from the get go.

- The set-up sees The remainder of the human race fleeing blindly through space, with the Cylons, a sentient AI race who just destroyed the known worlds hot on their tail. For reasons unknown to the humans, the Cylons keep finding them every 33 minutes, which means those fighting back don't get to rest, eat or sleep. We're thrown into the midst of the frontlines, from the top military brass stuck in the control room, to the pilots barely allowed to leave their jets. There's such an atmosphere of bleak despair, the sheer exhaustion on everyone's face builds up the atmosphere nicely.

- The high-concept set-up means the show can get to work on all he characters too, without wasting too much time on what's going on.

- Liked a lot how the episode intercut Baltar's fantasy scenes at his riverside mansion with the hectic main action. Elegant shit. Plus metaphor heaven.

- Early scenes of the show are not afraid to pursue grey areas can be scene in the episode's treatment of the Olympic carrier plotline, something I won't spoil in too much earnestness

- Speaking of which, the danger of BSG perhaps is its earnestness, and while its nice to these officers get pissed off, be irrational and just generally be assholes ( Saul Tigh and Starbuck in particular) there's still something innately good and noble about everyone, from the in over her head President Roslin (Played effectively by Donnie Darko's Mary McDonnell) to the gruff but fair Commander Adama. They might be subtler takes on these familiar tropes, but they still are those familiar tropes. Particularly in this episode.

- Still like the gallows humor going about. That makes watching despair much more enjoyable.

- Also like how the episode is building the smaller characters already, Roslin's aide Billy and Deck-Lt. Dualla are both small characters that get nice moments in this episode.

- Gaius Baltar in the early going at least, is the reason this show isn't just an ultra-polished version of Stargate: SG1. Baltar is by all means of measurement a coward and a traitor, and possibly the human responsible for the end of the world. On paper he's the easy villain of this show, but thanks to both the shows intentions and the funny, charming performance James Callis gives, it asks you to root for him. Its the first note of ambiguity in a show that went to grow many, but in '33', he's the audience surrogate into this militaristic world, a welcome presence of selfishness and humor in amongst the straight-faced nobility of the soldiers. Oh yeah and he also hallucinates metaphysical conversations with the Cylon chick Six he once banged. K?

- Tricia Helfer's performance as Six is awesome. I grant she's hot, but I've seen many hot actresses try to play sensual and fail, yet Helfer is encapsulating.

- I couldn't go much further without mentioning Starbuck, played fantastically by Katee Sackhoff, who is basically Humphrey Bogart as a hot chick. Delivering her limited material in this episode with an amusing hateful candidness. It gets much, much better.

- There's a great pace about this episode, that sets up the vibe of Battlestar Galactica as a road movie. A post-apocalyptic story as bleak as any, only skew sci-fi/fanboy. But I hear what your saying, its' called Battlestar Galactica and that just sounds shit and immature and yadayada. But Television is always the medium of how and not what, a terrible premise can make for great TV, and a great premise can make for shit TV. And even in this episode, ostensibly its first, the ambition and craft in Ron Moore's writing is plain, and this is not just another wish-fulfillment space fantasy, its something altogether smarter and engaging.

- My gut feeling though is this might be the best one for a while. Still bold writing, moral ambiguity and space battles make for an exciting 40 minutes of TV. Fucking solid opener.

Rating: 8/10

TV REVIEW: Spartacus: Blood And Sand Season 1

This show should just be called ' In The Arena.'

Part two of my blood and nakedness TV review extravaganza comes in the form of one of truly the most bizarre shows ever to be seen on television. Not in any kind of cool absurdest way, but in a wildly inconsistent, wildly erratic yet somehow sincere and occasionally impactful show. It shamelessly scrapes clean the corpses of superior shows like Deadwood and Lost, and so badly wants to be them it hurts. Its a fucking stupid show, but its got such a bravado and confidence you find yourself being won over anyway and I genuinely don't believe there's a show that's as good at making you not mind about the awful stuff, which always comes thick and fast. In a way its a poster boy for 'bigger picture' storytelling, where you don't sweat the small stuff because something AWESOME is about to happen. As a fan this is OK, but for the writer of a serialized show...Not really that OK.

First up I should say that every line of dialogue that anyone says ever is fucking atrocious, the pilfering of a Deadwood-esque pseudo poetic style only without the skill to make it sound anything other then laughable, combined with REALLY awkward swearing just means every line bombs. In every context. If somebody says something that doesn't make me squirm then it's a great and wonderful day for Spartacus: Blood And Sand. The acting, well holy shit. John Hannah gives the most appallingly hammy performance that should be the highlight of the show but is somehow the worst thing about it in spite of everything else. At times you seriously have to consider if he's taking the piss. The variety of super-buff gladiator types that make up the ludus, are all as wooden as hell, speaking the awkward dialogue even more awkwardly, just to make things more awkward. Only 300's Peter Mensah can act at all, and he can't do anything outside of shout ferociously, although I guess he does that pretty well. Lead Andy Whitfield is probably the most preferable male performance, and does on occasion try to bring dignity to proceedings, but its an uphill battle. The women, believe it or not in a show like this, fare much better. Lucy Lawless makes a decent villainess, although she's a shadow of her Battlestar Galactica character although that mostly worked because you were constantly surprised that it was Lucy Lawless from Xena being that good and I'm adjusted to that now. But its a series probably stolen by the appropriately named Viva Bianca as a manipulative roman socialite. She's the best of a bad bunch by merely being OK.

It's also the most overwrought show I've seen in a very long time, very obnoxious in how it must stay in your face at all times, and it means any time there's a real emotional moment it means nothing because the amp is always set to 11. To be clear I've said the writing is terrible, the acting is terrible and the overall tone is a joke but you still can't help but fall in with this show. It wins you over with sheer relentlessness, and once you've adjusted to the many things wrong with it it can be kind of awesome. Because despite all is difficulties, its a fearless show. Its a show that endeavors to blow your mind, a show that always tries to shock you and a show that always moves forward at a frightening pace. It did in its first 13 episodes what most shows would do in three years, and it has such a sense of ambition that you can forgive its failings in execution. So what if its clearer in their mind, and if you subscribe to the go big or go home philosophy then there's something here. Its certainly not shy of killing characters, nor going where you won't think it will go, you think its building to a reunion with his wife in the final episode. It's not. One particularly effective scene sees them kill a major character without warning or preparation and even a veteran TV death predictor with be caught off guard.

I think this is why it gets the praise it gets, because of this fearlessness. And perhaps because it has a sincerity missing from a number of similar shows, But that's literally all it has. Balls but not brains. For some people that's probably the perfect antidote to the Breaking Bad's and Mad Men's of this world, all full of their psychological bullshit. You get the same sense of darkness, but as seen through the eyes of a horny and bloodthirsty teenager instead of a grown ass man. If anything its secretly a comic book, or perhaps due to its perpetual and unblinking self-seriousness a graphic novel. But that's not enough for me really. I can make peace with it as a ridiculous guilty pleasure, but great TV. Not quite, not until it can master some the basics that it currently has no interest in mastering. I'm reminded of a quote that the creator of The Event said about the premise of his show. He said 'I want The Event to be like Lost and 24, but only the awesome parts.' Replace 24 with Deadwood and that's Spartacus. You don't need character development and intelligence when you've got orgies and decapitations. That's fine for now, but believe me this show has nowhere to go except fast enough that nobody notices its got no brakes.

Rating: 6/10